Sister Mary Ignatius, Vanessa Redgrave, & Roger Baldwin

National Review, Sept 6, 1985 by Nathan Perlmutter

But this position, which seems on the face of it so simple, was not arrived at simply--and was not arrived at without some confusion and a decidedly troubled conscience. For I'm a proteege of Roger Baldwin, the man who was to contemporary civil liberties roughly what Frank Lloyd Wright was to contemporary architecture. It was Roger Baldwin's recommendation that convinced the ADL to hire me 36 years ago.

I was sent to the Denver office and before long drew what is still for me a memorable assignment. I had to visit the manager of a radio station in Albuquerque and tell him that one of the commentators whose broadcasts he carried was an anti-Semite--though not over the air waves. Instead, every broadcast would end with an offer of free literature to concerned listeners. The literature he sent out might have been lifted straight from Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda.

I was in misery, assailed by waves of self-doubt. How could I ever live with myself? How could I reconcile my assignment with everything I believed about the sacredness of free speech? Nevertheless, I did what I had to do. Seconds after I'd said my piece, the station manager summoned an aide and ordered him to cancel the commentator. You might say of my mission, agony in victory.

A few days later, Roger Baldwin was in Denver, and he paid me a visit. I told him everything and braced myself for his disapproval. Instead, he chuckled, and pointed out that the decision to fire the commentator had not been mine. He pointed out further that I would do well to consider my own freedom of speech. Should I have suppressed my rights while the anti-Semite continued to exercise his? Then he mused, talking as much to himself as to me: "Why is it that the good guys are always made to feel guilty?'

LET CALENDAR leaves exfoliate. Let 36 years pass . . . I'm at my desk and I've just gotten a call from a prominent columnist on a major metropolitan daily. He's doing a piece on Vanessa Redgrave's suit against the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Miss Redgrave, whose enthusiastic support of the PLO approaches Yasir Arafat's, who once made a point of being filmed embracing terrorists and firing a Kalashnikov rifle in the direction of Israel's northern border, had had a scheduled appearance canceled by the orchestra. The reason: threats of violence from Jewish militants and stern warnings from Jewish philanthropists that her appearance would mean the end of their generous contributions.

The columnist took an adversarial tone. How did I feel, he demanded, about Jews who used their financial clout as a weapon against an artist whose political views differed from theirs?

I answered, "Fine,' I felt just fine about it.

Didn't I think some of the more liberal members of the Boston Jewish community might have problems swallowing the abridgment of Miss Redgrave's civil rights by these big givers?

I replied I hoped not. And I advanced the proposition that a big giver, a philanthropist, yes, a fatcat, had the inalienable right to give--or not to give--to what he pleased. Surely, I ventured, any philanthropist who voluntarily enriched the political paramour of those who sought to kill him would be a damn fool.